Threads and Lullabies
by QueenOfTheDreamers87
Summary: 1996. Bellatrix is humming in the gardens of Malfoy Manor and is overheard by Lord Voldemort. He reminds her that she's always done this, and a discussion of lullabies and the threads that bind us to reality follows. Canon-compliant Bellamort one-shot.


_February 1996_

Bellatrix sat on a wrought iron bench in the barren garden outside Malfoy Manor, staring at the thorny vines where ruby red roses would eventually grow once more. She pulled her heavy velvet cloak more tightly around her body, and she adjusted the elegant leather gloves she'd been gifted by Narcissa.

After the Azkaban breakout, almost a week had been spent putting Bellatrix "to rights." Her teeth and health had been attended to by a Healer who was privately sympathetic to Lord Voldemort's cause. All the flea bites, the gum disease, the rotten teeth and even the effects of malnutrition had been addressed through potions and spellwork. It had taken complex magic to heal Bellatrix's body from the damage done unto her by prison.

But they could not fix her mind.

Years spent staring at stone walls, spent gazing out narrow windows at hovering Dementors, meant that Bellatrix's thoughts echoed and groaned inside her skull with a dreary thud most of the time. She was working hard, on the Dark Lord's orders, to get herself back to her sharp, angry self. After all, he'd reminded her, the witch he'd left behind that Halloween night in 1981 had been a spirited, vivacious creature. That was what he expected of his soldier now. He needed her keen and ready for this new war.

Bellatrix reached out for a thorn and touched at it. It punctured the pad of her gloved finger, not hard enough to break the leather, but enough for Bellatrix to feel. So often, in Azkaban, she had hardly felt anything at all. She'd cried out for Rodolphus. She'd spent night after night screaming for her master. But she had spent much of her time just growing older, silent and numb. Now she pulled her hand back from the bare rosebush and gazed down at the icy dirt below, humming a tune she'd composed a decade earlier in prison. There had been words, too. It was a lullaby she'd written for herself, something to put herself to sleep at night when the feel of the Dementors outside had been too much to bear.

_Someday my Master and I will dance upon the shore. He'll have his riches, his power, forevermore. And I'll be at his feet and I will gladly bend to greet him. Someday my Master and I will dance upon the shore._

Bellatrix hummed, shut her eyes, and envisioned the lyrics of the lullaby. She was taken away from the frigid garden of Malfoy Manor all of a sudden, drawn to some sunny beach somewhere, where Lord Voldemort was standing with his arms outstretched. His robes were billowing about him in a wind he had Conjured to mark his ascent into glory, and Bellatrix was cackling with glee, and -

"Bella?"

She gasped, opening her eyes and turning her head to the side to see that a figure had appeared beside her in the Malfoys' garden. Bellatrix pulled down the heavy velvet hood of her cloak, revealing her wild curls with the little shock of grey that had grown in during her imprisonment. Before her stood her Lord and Master, barefoot and unbothered by the icy ground. His enormous snake, Nagini, slithered behind him, but Voldemort turned his white head and hissed in Parseltongue at the snake.

"_Hyossossiteth i mehetesss… kianossisssa i tessshimesh."_

Nagini almost appeared to obediently dip her head in a reptilian sort of obeisance, and then the snake made her way back toward the manor, leaving a trail in the dusting of ice and snow on the ground behind her. Voldemort sighed, and Bellatrix started to rise from where she sat on the bench. Voldemort gestured for her to stay seated, and he sank down onto the bench beside her. Bellatrix rudely stared at him then, studying the way that this new form of his had a familiar eye shape, a hauntingly recognisable jawline, but radically different colourings and omissions. He was bald, with thin purplish-blue veins just under his milky flesh. His nose more nearly resembled a snake's slits than a human feature. And his eyes gleamed scarlet, where they had once been a rich chestnut brown.

But Bellatrix did not mind the look of him. Not one bit. All that she cared about was that he had returned. He was back, and she could serve him again as a soldier in combat instead of a wailing mourner keening out for him in Azkaban. He was not dead, as she had so often feared. He was here. He was alive.

"Master," she said quietly, bowing her head. "I was just… staring at thorns."

"You were humming when I came out here," Voldemort noted. "Something I did not know. I confess to an ignorance of some wizarding traditions, owing to my humble childhood."

Bellatrix pinched her lips and said nothing. Everyone knew that Tom Riddle had grown up in a Muggle orphanage before becoming Lord Voldemort. That didn't matter now, she wanted to say. The songs the Muggles had sung to him when he'd been a child had no bearing on the powerful wizard he had become. But he didn't give her the chance to speak; he asked,

"Is it a folk song?"

Bellatrix flashed him a self-conscious little smile and shook her head. "It is just a little tune I wrote in my mind in Azkaban, Master. Something to keep my head occupied at the worst of moments."

"Oh." He furrowed his brows, which was odd because he did not actually have hair on his browline. He looked less human than ever right now, white on white in the wintry garden, but he glanced around and then returned his crimson eyes to Bellatrix. "You know, during my long absence, I forgot a lot of things. Faces. Names. The threads that bound me to my old life became quite thin. As time passed, those threads snapped one by one. But I never forgot the sound of you humming. You've always hummed."

"Have I, My Lord?" Bellatrix grinned broadly, unable to help herself. She shrugged a little and admitted, "I suppose I have. It used to drive my parents mad when I was a little girl. I'd hum at the dinner table. _So very rude,_ my mother would say."

"Do you remember that time I scolded you for humming before a Death Eaters' meeting?" Voldemort asked. "The whole room was silent except for the sound of you humming _Plaid Robes For Pippen._"

Bellatrix giggled just a little and nodded. "Yes, and as it turned out, that meeting was serious and important and I was just being awful. I do apologise."

"I never forgot the sound of you humming," Voldemort said, and his voice cut seriously through the moment, so sharply that Bellatrix stopped laughing at once. Her smile faded, and she nodded. Voldemort's throat bobbed, and he said, "It always felt a little like a lullaby, memories of your voice. That sounds silly, but the reality is that I needed those threads. You understand, I needed those threads to keep binding me to my past, and your voice was one of those threads."

"A lullaby," Bellatrix repeated. She let her eyes move away from him then, for they felt heavy all of a sudden, and she sniffed through the cold. "That's what wrote itself in my head in Azkaban. A lullaby. Sometimes the Dementors would make me feel like I was being pulled apart from the inside out. Or I would have these awful thoughts of you being dead, Master, and I would go days without sleep. So I had this little lullaby that I wrote for myself, and it soothed me a little. That's what you heard when you came out here to the garden."

There was a long pause, and then Voldemort asked, "Are there words?"

Bellatrix could not bring herself to look at him, but she nodded. She stared at the thorn before her, at its sharp point, and she sang quietly,

"_Someday my Master and I will dance upon the shore. He'll have his riches, his power, forevermore. And I'll be at his feet and I will gladly bend to greet him. Someday my Master and I will dance upon the shore._"

There was more silence then, except for the wind that was picking up a little. Bellatrix shivered a bit, glancing down at her gloved hands. She finally turned her face to see that Voldemort was just staring at her, his eyes searing red and his pale lips parted a little. He nodded and reached up with the claw-like hand would have frightened anyone else. Bellatrix sucked in air hard when his palm settled on her cheek and his fingers curled around her jaw. She shut her eyes, but he said quietly,

"Look at me."

She dragged her eyelids up and tried to breathe, the cold air heavy in her lungs. She should be terrified of him, she thought distantly. He was not human now. Not really. And he was a murderous tyrant, wasn't he?

No. He was her wondrous master. He was absolutely everything.

"Bellatrix," Voldemort whispered, his breath puffing in the winter air before him. He brought her near and pressed his cool lips to her forehead, and Bellatrix let out a trembling lungful of air. She instinctively clutched at the front of his robes, holding fast to him as if releasing him would make him disappear from her again. He moved his mouth from her forehead, lowering it until his lips touched hers, and after a brief kiss, he murmured onto her mouth,

"I forgot so many things, Bella, but I did not ever forget any part of you. You were a thread."

She felt his other hand snare into her curls, and she moaned quietly. She could not help herself. He smirked and touched his lips to hers again before taunting her,

"That voice."

"Master," Bellatrix crooned against his lips. "My Lord."

His wicked, crooked smile grew, and his hands tightened on her, and he told her, "I never forgot that voice."

He pulled back then, leaving Bellatrix breathless with mussed hair and flushed cheeks. He cleared his throat and smiled to himself, nodding. He pulled his long fingers over his bald head and sighed through the slits of his nose, telling her again,

"You were a thread. You were a constant. You were a lullaby. Perhaps sometime soon, I might like to hear more of your voice under different circumstances, Bella. Hmm? Now, I'm going inside. It's freezing out here."

**Author's Note: Fluffy post-reunion Bellamort yay! As previously mentioned, I intend on finishing **_**In Pursuit**_**, but plan on waiting to write that until my health has improved and therefore my writing will have improved, as well. Until then, I'll just be doing Bellamort one-shots. Thanks for reading and reviewing.**


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